Not everyone – in mai-baap India, that is – seems to have quite ‘understood’ what Musk Jrs were doing in the room where Elon met Modi. Some fusty souls even raised their pencilled eyebrows, saying the presence of the Musk-eteers was ‘odd’ enough, but their nannies – ‘Not even their mum(s)!’ – being there was ‘a bit much, nahin?’ Uncleji, Auntieji, the thing is, in America, having kids at the workplace, no matter how ‘serious’ the work may be, is no haaram. No domestic staff will be hollered, ‘Pappu ko le jao idhar se!’ In fact, having a kid in the presence of serious business brings the temperature down, infuses a lightness much needed when conducting the ‘grown up’ stuff.
The optics of a row of a suited, GoI-stamped Indian delegation including the foreign minister, Indian ambassador and NSA facing three kids and two au pairs may seem surreally asymmetrical. But in the apple O and baseball ball throwabouts world of MuskTrump’s Americana, this is SOP. In fact, MAGA symbolism would imbue the kids-in-the-grown-up’s meeting setting as a gentle reiteration of ‘American family values’, where the young child is part of the portrait not just of home, but life and lifestyle itself. That the Musk Sr held a press con in the Oval Office with his son on his shoulders and POTUS looking on should tell us that Big Daddy in America means big daddy as well.
